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Does Google's power as a company diminish its utility as a tool? (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

It seems likely that the F.T.C. will bring an antitrust suit against Google. That is, unless Google settles first.

From the consumer point-of-view, does this matter? Yes. Pressure from the F.T.C. is an important brake on Google's muddling of search and commerce, but it won't compromise the viability of Google's business. Google is a company of engineers, and their methods involve testing tolerances. Antitrust laws are just one such tolerance.

I wrote about this back in May when Google first changed their previously sacred policy about "pay-for-play" in their shopping featured listings. It seemed to me at the time to violate the expectation that the company had created that all of their results were "best match," based solely on its ever-evolving algorithm. Google is not the only tech company that has trained its users to expect ultimately undeliverable things, but most people view Google more as a utility than a commercial entity.

Google's core search and advertising business is a strange mix, but it is a bargain that users have gotten comfortable with. We realize that in return for better and better search results we will be served advertisements that are aware of our current search, and we may or may not be as aware of how they are tuned based on our search or browsing history. Even within this nexus of information exchange there are dangers of anti-competitive behavior on Google's part, but it is the ways that they have stepped outside of this core business that have raised the F.T.C.'s current concerns.

Again, as with their original AdWords product, Google has an argument about how their shopping listings serve consumers' interests. The paid shopping listings were introduced along with other improvements in the display of certain kinds of information using Google's Knowledge Graph. These new display boxes, for everything from flight times, to biographies, to scientific calculations, are especially useful in the company's Google Now mobile personal assistant interface. To Google, "surfacing" shopping deals (no matter their origin) is a service to the user.

But this approach is part of the conundrum that continues to lead the tech industry away from consumers' true interests. By making things easier, we also hide the process by which these results are selected. Unfortunately for the conceptual clarity of this argument, the same can be said for why some things show up on the first page of search results rather than the fifth. Some of the results have to come first, and we assume these are the best match for what we have asked for. That the top of the top (the highlighted ones in the box) are both the closest fit AND paid for, raises the possibility that the absolute best fit may not be included in the display box because it was not also paid for.

Once we begin to question the purity of the search results, we have to look critically at the top of the "unpaid" results as well. Do they exhibit "preferencing" of Google's own products (of which there are now many)? This is the nub of the F.T.C.s possible case against Google, but whatever concessions the company might make, either to avoid a trial or in response to its outcome, should have to deal not only with the present playing field, but also with how it does or does not expand into adjacent lines of business.

Google could make the case (in a similar but different way than Apple would) that its braiding of search and commerce and mobile provide a more integrated experience for users. The problem (in both cases) is that users cannot readily test the alternatives. In both the Google and Apple "bundles," there are defaults and built-in baises that are hard to be actively aware of, much less change. Google is an incredibly useful tool and an incredibly powerful company. The question for users, and by extension the F.T.C., is at what point its power begins to diminish its utility.